Transhumanism is a philosophy and worldview that is represented through the educational projects at Humanity+. Below is the Transhumanist Manifesto, with links to the philosophy, the Transhumanist Declaration, and Transhumanist FAQ.
by Natasha Vita-More 1983
(Revised 1998 v.2, 2008 v.3, 2020 v.4)
The Transhumanist Manifesto challenges the human condition. This condition asserts that aging is a disease, augmentation and enhancement to the human body and brain are essential for survival, and that human life is not restricted to any one form or environment. Understanding these conditions are core to the philosophy and worldview of transhumanism and advocate for the ethical use of technology and evidence-based science to intervene and effectively mitigate aging and to retreat from “genetic liability by advancing genetic liberty”. These actions must be reached with a mindful, reasonable approach.
What disturbs people’s minds is not events but their judgments on events.”
— Epictetus, 500 BC
It is known that medical interventions that mitigate disease and aim to restore health and well-being have advanced exponentially. Genomics has made it possible to predict, diagnose, and treat diseases with more precision and focused on personalized care. While the medical science is advancing, this does not resolve the issue of human biology and the maximum lifespan. To ameliorate this liability and until aging is resolved through nanomedicine and other innovations, augmentation and enhancement to the human body and brain are essential for survival. To seek this end goal, the seminal future body prototype known as “Primo Posthuman” (1996) developed the concept of a tertiary brain referred to as the Metabrain. The Metabrain could be arrived at through an AI/AGI engineered prothesis to the cortex and limbic systems for the purposes of aiding the human brain where faltering, providing a storage system for memory, and augmenting intelligence.
Each person deserves the right of genetic liberty. People have a fundamental right to own their body, shape who they are, and live their lives. Morphological Freedom meets this condition by protecting a person’s right to augment and enhance and protects a person’s right never to be coerced to augment and enhance. Human life is not restricted to any one form or by any one environment. Environments are the sole factor for the existence of life whether it be the biosphere on earth, digitality of cyberspace, artificial simulations of virtual reality, or the life support systems within outer space. To maintain existence, all environments require safe and healthy infrastructures that protect life and eliminate threats to life.
This something new is transhumanism[i]—a worldview that seeks a quality of life that brings about perpetual progress, self-transformation, practical optimism, visionary solutions, and critical thinking—the transhuman.
The transhuman[ii] is a biological-technological organism, a transformation of the human species that continues to evolve with technology. This evolution is understood within the fields of paleontology, archaeology, evolutionary biology, and anthropology. It is further studied and understood in philosophical discourse and social and cultural studies. It is made aware and realized through advances in technology that bring about human-computer interaction, wearable devices, and computerized communication infrastructures. It is evidenced in medical science and scientific breakthroughs that identify genetic mutation and target disease as well as research and development of gene therapies that aim to reverse and restore cellular damage of biological system. On an environmental level, it is experienced in spaceflight by astronauts adapting to environments beyond earth. On an interactive level, it is experienced in the personalized avatar and character usage of virtual reality, augmented reality, video games, and other artificial environments.
Life extension aims to increase the maximum human lifespan. Life expansion means increasing the length of time a person is alive and diversifying the matter in which increasing options and capabilities a person exists. For human life, the length of time is bounded by a single century and its matter is tied to biology. To pursue longevity, it is crucial to uncover visible and invisible borders between interconnecting forces that disrupt health and well-being. It is also necessary to actively address ethical concerns about science and technology with reasonable defense, to protect human rights, including morphological freedom[iii].
Transhumanism is the first philosophy and worldview to publicly proclaim the need to eradicate disease and to advocate for longevity and ageless thinking. Transhumanists have contributed toward the ideas, research, development, and education of longevity through science, technology and addressed governing bodies and groups on the ethical use of technology such as AI, nanotechnology, and genetic engineering. Transhumanists are the world’s strongest advocacy for a positive future of health, well-being, and prosperity for every human.
[, and some of us are in the middle [technoproactive], and others toward the right (conservative, libertarian), many are independent.
No matter left or right all these political views are democratic transhumanists.
Transhuman or Transhumanist politics is currently focused on a collaborative perspective.
Most transhumanists today align with Technoprogressive politics, as outlined in its Declaration.“ [xv]
“There is no government, no industrial-military complex, no economic system,
no mass media that can ever reduce us to puppets and robots as thoroughly
as the biological and environmental dictatorships have.”
——F.M.Esfandiary, Upwingers
I am transhuman.
In an aim to integrate creativity and reason
for the purpose of self-awareness and longevity
—promoted by persistence
aware of odds, informed by risk,
alert to new discovery, welcoming challenge,
ever-changing—
I become.
The Transhuman calls upon a heightened sensibility to reveal the multiplicity of realms yet to be discovered, yet to be realized.
We are exploring how current and future technologies affect our senses, our cognition, and our lives.
Our attention to and comprehension of these relationships become fields of art as we participate in the most immediate and vital issues for transhumanity:
extending life, augmenting intelligence, and creativity, exploring the universe.
The Transhumans invent and design with technology and collaborate with the cosmos, perform in multiple realities, automorph mind and body,
conceive, innovate, and explore. We indelibly engrave longevity memes.
We are the neo-cyberneticists utilizing high-end creativity, engineering skills, scientific data, and automated tools to author our visions.
The Transhumans encourage experimentation and attitudes of abundance and emphasizes the infinite possibilities of self-transformation
as we seek new values indispensable to our self-creation. We have no interest in focusing on self-defeating thinking or entropy.
We are achieving refined emotions through provocative forward thinking and analytical techniques.
Each person influences social and cultural change: how we live and who we are.
Each person creates a sense of self, autonomous yet connected to culture’s continuum.
How we accomplish our intentions is a matter of selective individual choice—whether abstract or concrete, whether artefact or non-form.
Our criteria for art remain open and we welcome cross-disciplinary innovations.
Our unique ingenuity will spread far out into the capillaries of society.
We are active participants in our own evolution.
We are shaping the image of who we are becoming (1983 v.1; 1998 v.2.).
Reference Endnotes
[i] More, M. (1990) Transhumanism: Toward a Futurist Philosophy. In Extropy Magazine. Vol. 4, No. 1.
[ii] [Vita-More, N. and Clark, W. (1988-1995). Note: The research on the history of the term “transhuman” and “transhumanism” was completed Winifred Clark and Natasha Vita-More during the mid-1990s: “As an historical note, the Italian verb “transumanare” or “transumanar” was used for the first time by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) in the Divine Comedy. It means “go outside the human condition and perception” and in English could be “to Transhumanate” or “to Transhumanize.” T.S. Eliot wrote about the risks of the human journey in becoming illuminated as a “process by which the human is Transhumanised” (1950:147) in his play “The Cocktail Party” (1950). The actual concept of transhuman as an evolutionary transition was first expressed by FM-2030 (f/k/a FM Esfandiary). His trilogy, Optimism One (1970), Up-Wingers (1973)and Telespheres (1977) comprises his unique ideas about the transhuman, some of which were mentioned in the final chapter of Woman In The Year 2000 (1974). Ideas about humanity and evolution were explored by Julian Huxley in his writings on evolutionary humanism in the book Evolution: The Modern Synthesis (1942) and suggested the term transhuman for a “superior being aware of his potential and able to work toward it because of his knowledge” (Halacy 1965:11). Pierre Teilhard de Chardin referenced the transhuman in The Future of Man (2004) and, in 1966, FM-2030 (fka FM Esfandiary) outlined an evolutionary transhuman future while teaching “New Concepts of the Human” at the New School for Social Research in New York City. Abraham Maslow referred to transhumans in Toward a Psychology of Being (1968), Robert Ettinger also referred to transhumans in Man into Superman (1972), the author wrote the “Transhuman Manifesto” (1982), and Damien Broderick discusses the transhuman in the science fiction novel The Judas Mandala (1982), and by Natasha Vita-More in the “Transhuman Manifesto” (1983).
[iii] Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphological_freedom
[iv] Wiener, N. (1950) The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics. New York: Da Capo Press, pp. x, 58, 95, 103, 134-135, 163.
[v] Mann, S. (May 1998) WEARABLE COMPUTING as a means for PERSONAL EMPOWERMENT. Keynote address titled presented at the 1998 International Conference on Wearable Computing ICWC-98, Fairfax VA.
[vi] Warwick, K. (2004) I, Cyborg. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, p. 4.
[vii] Haraway, D. (1991) Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, pp. 3-5, 149-181.
[viii] “Primo Posthuman”. (1996). The seminal future whole-body prosthetic device that offers a regenerative semi-biological body, fostered by AI and nanomedicine. This body is an alternative to a frail and unfunctioning human body. Available: https://www.kurzweilai.net/radical-body-design-primo-posthuman
[ix] Wiener, N. (1950) The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics. New York: Da Capo Press, pp. x, 58, 95, 103, 134-135, 163.
[x] Bostrom, N. (2005) A History of Transhumanist Thought. In Journal of Evolution and Technology, Vol. 14, No. 1
[xi] Pepperell, R. (1995) The Post-Human Condition. Bristol, UK: Intellect.
[xii] Sandberg, A. and Koene, R. (3 October 2009) Anders Sandberg and Randal Koene On Whole Brain Emulation. In H+ Magazine. See http://hplusmagazine.com/2009/10/03/singularity-summit-anders-sandberg-and-randal-keone-whole-brain-emulation/
[xiii] Drexler, E. (1987) Engines of Creation. Harpswell, ME: Anchor, pp. v, 4, 213.
[xiv] Vita-More, N. (March 2012) Life Expansion. Plymouth, UK. University of Plymouth. https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk/handle/10026.1/1182. (2013) Body by Design. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVG2MbpHd4o
[xv] Vita-More, N. (2018). Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/TRANSHUMANISM-What-Natasha-Vita-More/dp/0578405075
[xvi] Goertzel, B. and Vita-More, N. (2020). H+ Summit 2020. https://humanityplus.org/projects/humanity-conferences/